At the core of lexical processing: computational and neurocognitive issues

The lexicon lies at the root of our linguistic competence and represents a fundamental interface domain between language and our conceptualisation of the outside world. In traditional conceptions of the language architecture, the lexicon has been generally characterised as a declarative memory store of static building blocks, with rules providing the basic principles and constraints on their on-line procedural combination. The talk deals with some recent computational models of self-organising memories and neuroimaging evidence of the connectivity of the perisylvian network for language processing and working memory located in the left hemisphere of the human brain, to suggest a different conception of the mental lexicon and its role in the architecture of language.